Governor’s State University (GSU), a fouryear public university in Illinois, has simplified campus audio distribution and management with a Dante Audio over IP network from Audinate, which supports lowlatency distribution of more than 500 channels between its TV studios, performing arts center, and numerous campus halls and educational buildings.
The transition to Dante originated in the campus broadcast production center, which comprises two television studios, two control rooms, a master control center for GSU’s local cable access channel, multiple edit suites, and audio production rooms. Using off-the-shelf Cisco switches and standard network cabling, campus technical staff designed and deployed a dedicated campus-wide Dante network using existing dark fiber, keeping labor costs to a bare minimum. The team has since gradually expanded the network to other locations with minimal labor and time.
“We had a house video router that also supported multiple layers of analog and AES audio,” says Charles Nolley, vice president of media marketing and communications at GSU. “We were faced with the growing complexities of accommodating more multichannel audio in our video productions. It became increasingly difficult to route multiple levels of audio through a traditional routing infrastructure, and the challenges of managing audio from remote production locations across campus were cumbersome and time-consuming.”
Nolley notes that Dante has also vastly improved the sophistication of its production- oriented communications by interfacing several intercom systems with Dante-enabled Yamaha DSPs and Studio Technologies interface devices.
“We can now tie intercom, talkback and IFB together for communications between the TV studio and performance arts center,” said Nolley. “Dante has all these systems talking to each other, and it gives us incredible flexibility in configuring channels.”
The staff has also found new freedom in mixing theater performances. Connecting to a Yamaha CL5 and Shure ULXD systems in the theater, operators can now also pull live sources directly from the mic preamps to the CL5 in the TV studio to create their own mixes for cable TV broadcasts, as opposed to being forced to use the house mix, as well as creating synced multi-track recordings for remixing in post. Focusite RedNet 3 interface devices provide full Dante connectivity to a Sony digital console in Control B, 32 channels of I/O to a separate ProTools audio suite, and Dante I/O to multiple HD video recorders and server channels.
